Page 38 of Hero on the Road
“I think we stay here for at least the night. You know the buzz won’t last. We’ll be talked about for one media cycle and then it’ll be all over.”
“Maybe nationwide. But in Montana? I don’t think they have a lot of news to replace us.”
“Okay, that’s a good point, but our problem isn’t in Montana. The people here love us. They think it’s great that we’re doing what we’re doing.”
“Which is exactly the problem,” she pointed out. “They think it’s so great that they’re talking about it, which is how the label found out. So I’m asking again. What are we going to do? If the label won’t send us money and no one else can, and we’re not allowed to play the shows that are keeping us fed...”
I watched her work through the problem again—this wasn’t the first time we’d had this exact same conversation tonight—and gulped. She looked exhausted. The shadows under her eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them and the rest of her face was pale, like this problem was sucking the color right out of her.
And I hated it. I wanted to reach out and touch her, tell her it was going to be okay. Tell her we’d figure it out, one way or the other. I wanted to find a way to make her stop worrying.
And for once, I listened to that instinct. I reached out and laid my hand over hers, not demanding or pushing but just resting it there. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. But I promise we’ll get this figured out. We’ve got two pretty good minds between the two of us and one way or another, we’ll find a way. Don’t quit on me, Olivia.”
Her eyes met mine and she bit her lip. For a moment we just stared at each other, neither of us saying anything, and I wondered if she was holding her breath the way I was. I wondered if she’d ever had anyone she could trust to take care of her like I was offering to. I knew she’d spent her high school career taking care of Parker rather than vice versa, and though Parker was in a better situation now and, in theory, Olivia’s manager, I wondered if she’d actually returned the favor.
Or if Olivia was still so closed off because she was still trying to take care of herself, and thought that opening up and asking for help would just set her up for disappointment.
Her eyes flicked to my lips then, and I caught my own lip in my teeth. Was she breathing? Because I couldn’t. I felt like the air had suddenly turned to molasses, everything moving one hundred times more slowly than it should.
Except for my heart. That was hammering so hard I thought she could definitely hear it.
God, what was wrong with me? I’d known this girl almost my entire life. I’d spent time with her over Christmas. I’d kissed her, held her in my arms, and done a whole lot more than that. So why did I feel like a fourteen-year-old boy facing his first kiss right now?
Why did this feel so much more important than any other moment I’d ever lived through?
I blew a breath out, forcing myself to move forward, and reached my hand up to brush my fingers softly along her lips. She parted them at the touch, and I felt her breath brush across my skin.
And something inside me cracked wide open.
A moment later, chaos erupted outside the van.
CHAPTER22
Olivia
We exploded out of the van, Connor holding the bat he’d insisted on buying for self-defense, and came to a sudden stop right outside the doors of the van, both of us standing so still we might have been statues.
Because that bat might have been for self-defense, but I didn’t think it was going to do one damn thing against the enormous bear currently rifling through the cooler of food we’d brought with us.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. And a stupid, insane part of me wanted to start laughing hysterically. I was still rational enough to realize that all three of those were probably bad ideas, though my mind was refusing to hand me the right answer. What were you supposed to do when you ran right into a bear? Hit it on the nose? No, that was a shark. Yell as loud as you could? No, that was a coyote.
I had no idea what we were supposed to do. The truth was, I’d never in a million years thought I would run into a bear, so even if I’d read what you were supposed to do, I’d probably forgotten it.
Wait. It was run uphill, I thought. They weren’t fast uphill.
Or was it downhill?
Not that it mattered. We were in a flat campground with no hills around, and though there were a number of trees around for climbing, I was pretty sure that bear could climb a tree faster than I could.
What the bear couldn’t do, though, was get into our van. Which was where we would have stayed if we were smart.
“I don’t suppose you have any ideas, do you?” Connor whispered from right next to me.
“What, you don’t think you can take him on with your bat?” I replied.
Look, I knew it was snarky and totally inappropriate. But he had it coming. He was, after all, the one who’d left the food out on the table in the first place.
“Told you we needed to put the food into the bear box,” I added, unable to stop myself.
